Maintenance of commercial aircraft requires the coordination of multiple services and part suppliers, and the exchange of information relating to components from the aircraft that require service, maintenance or replacement. Aircraft OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) typically supply customers with a variety of documents and information that are used by the customers to perform aircraft maintenance, and manage related maintenance documents. These documents include, by way of example, part catalogs, maintenance manuals, wiring diagrams, maintenance training manuals, in-service activity reports, repair records and service letters.
It is obviously necessary for the OEM to control the original documents so that their integrity and accuracy can be maintained. However, airline operator customers and maintenance providers often have a need to make certain types of changes to the OEM supplied maintenance documents, either for their own business purposes, or to satisfy regulatory requirements. In some cases, the customers may also wish to add or append their own data to the OEM supplied maintenance documents.
In the past, the customer's ability to access OEM supplied maintenance documents was limited, since not all of these documents and related data were readily accessible from the OEM in a single delivery vehicle. Moreover, depending on the type of maintenance document or data, the customer could not easily edit the documents or data, or comprehensively manage the data once modifications were made.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system for creating, editing and managing maintenance data which overcomes each of the deficiencies mentioned above. The present invention is directed toward satisfying this need.